THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE 69 



idle questions. To ask the scientist to repeat all the 

 myriads of incidents which have led one animal to 

 develop in one direction and another in another, is as 

 fruitless as to insist that he should explain in detail 

 exactly why every leaf in the forest chances to fall 

 on one side or the other, before we would admit the 

 cogency of the law of gravitation. They are inci- 

 dents in the general application of law, and incidents 

 only. 



The question before us, however, is quite differ- 

 ent from any of these. All other such questions are 

 problems of organic structure and are bound up 

 with the still mysterious laws of organic inheritance. 

 Language is an artificial structure which is con- 

 sciously built, and its possession is not dependent 

 upon a question of organic inheritance. It could be 

 acquired seemingly by any animal with sufficient 

 mental powers to make use of it. The very fact that 

 we do find among animals so many rudiments of 

 human mental activities makes even more cogent the 

 question why in mankind alone they have really 

 developed any power of speech. What has been the 

 stimulus which started the development of the mental 

 powers of man and forced it into such a marvelous 

 advance while other animals have remained upon a 

 low plane of monotony? The force of this question 

 has appealed quite differently to different scientists. 

 Wallace has felt its force so vividly as to have been 

 led to assume some special supernatural stimulus as 

 being required to start the wonderful development of 

 man. Others have not accepted such a position and 

 have tried to find some other more natural kind of an 

 answer. 



We notice, first, that mind and language in a 



